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We are having a hard time finding high-quality companies at attractive valuations.

For us, this is not an academic frustration. We are constantly looking for new stocks by running stock screens, endlessly reading (blogs, research, magazines, newspapers), looking at holdings of investors we respect, talking to our large network of professional investors, attending conferences, scouring through ideas published on value investor networks, and finally, looking with frustration at our large (and growing) watch list of companies we’d like to buy at a significant margin of safety. The median stock on our watch list has to decline by about 35-40% to be an attractive buy.

But maybe we’re too subjective. Instead of just asking you to take our word for it, in this letter we’ll show you a few charts that not only demonstrate our point but also show the magnitude of the stock market’s overvaluation and, more importantly, put it into historical context.

Past tense; that is. A big move is coming in the S&P 500 and it will take everyone’s breath away. Simply put: The S&P 500 has traded in a multi-year consolidation range with a high of 2134 and a low of 1810. A breakout or breakdown out of this range could result in a measured technical move of the height of the range, i.e. 2134 – 1810 = 324 handles. Consequently a break toward the upside would target 2458 (15% above all time highs) and conversely a breakdown would target 1486 and represent a 30.4% correction off of all time highs.

I’ve outlined the bear arguments in detail in Feeding the Monster, so I won’t bother rehashing them here. However, in analyzing the larger market structures an interesting duality is emerging: A fight for control…

Note: The following is an excerpt from this week’s Earnings Trends report. You can access the full report that contains detailed historical actuals and estimates for the current and following periods, please click here>>>

Here are the key points:

• The Q1 earnings is effectively over now, with results from 492 S&P 500 members already out. Total earnings for these companies are up +13.5% from the same period last year on +7.2% higher revenues, with 72.6% beating EPS estimates and 65.2% beating revenue estimates.

• These results represent a notable improvement over what we have been seeing from the same group of companies in other recent periods. While growth reached the highest level in more than 5 years, a bigger proportion of companies have been able to beat estimates,…

First and foremost let me point out that Ray Dalio, founder of investment firm Bridgewater Associates, has joined Twitter so I encourage you to follow him here. Secondly I suggest you grab a cup of coffee or maybe the entire pot as he gradually lays out what he sees ahead for the market. Enjoy!

Big picture, the near term looks good and the longer term looks scary. That is because:

The economy is now at or near its best, and we see no major economic risks on the horizon for the next year or two,

There are significant long-term problems (e.g., high debt and non-debt obligations, limited abilities by central banks to stimulate, etc.) that are likely to create a squeeze,

Social and political conflicts are near their worst for the last number of decades,…

The freezing cold and no million dollar signing bonus would be enough to send me to Silicon Valley. I grew up next to Lake Michigan and I'd take West coast weather any day..........unless there was more money involved. Yes, I can be bought. *lol*

Chart: Retail Apocalypse 2017

Back in 2000, less than 1% of retail sales came from e-commerce. However, online sales have climbed each and every year since then, even through the Great Recession. By 2009, e-commerce made up about 4.0% of total retail sales, and today the latest number we have is 8.3%.

Most economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal expected Federal Reserve officials to begin winding down their $4.5 trillion portfolio of bonds and other assets this year.

Nearly 70% of business and academic economists polled in recent days expected the Fed will begin allowing the portfolio, also called the balance sheet, to shrink by allowing securities to mature without reinvesting the proceeds at some point in 2017. Of the economists who expected a shift in the Fed’s balance sheet strategy this year, the majority predicted the process would begin in December.

In last month’s survey, just 22.2% of economists expected the Fed to begin…

Stan Druckenmiller recently elucidated: “Earnings don’t move the overall market; it’s the Federal Reserve Board… focus on the central banks and focus on the movement of liquidity… most people in the market are looking for earnings and conventional measures. It’s liquidity that moves markets.”

Even with the bond market’s muted response to the Federal Reserve’s plan to begin winding down its almost $4.3 trillion portfolio of mortgage and Treasury securities, there are plenty of reasons why the calm probably won’t last.

While Google and Facebook are the undisputed advertising leaders online, companies are increasingly looking for other digital ways to spend their marketing budgets, according to advertising and public relations company WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell.

"What our clients want and what our agencies want is more competition of the space, anything that gives more competition to the duopoly of Facebook and Google," Sorrell said to CNBC.

The US pharmaceutical industry is on the brink of a new ecosystem — but it's not taking off as smoothly as expected.

Up until the past few years, biologic drugs made from living cells didn't face competition once they lost patent protection. That's been changing with the introduction of drugs called biosimilars. But their rollout hasn't exactly been the game-changing experience some had expected.

"We believe that biosimilars will capture meaningful market share, but the disappointing commercial success so far with less than $2 billion annual sales illustrates that the bar is high," Morgan Stanley analysts said in a report on Wednesday. That's in large part because of the economic challenges that biosimilars face, the report says.

Biosimilars are a bit more complicated than your average competing medicine: Unlike generics for…

Grab a cup of coffee, sit back and absorb this piece which I believe, will blow your mind. I had read a good deal on self-driving cars and the implications of what lies ahead but this piece by Ben Evans has completely re-written my belief of what life will be in ten years. Wowsa! I know what I'll be dreaming about tonight. *lol* Enjoy-

Wall Street pros say bull markets don’t die of old age. But after eight years of rising stock prices, being on the lookout for signs of a market peak makes good financial sense.

No bull lasts forever. Good times eventually are followed by bad ones, as investor euphoria gives way to fear and despair. The performance history of the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index drives home the point: The 12 bull markets since the 1930s have all been followed by bear markets, or downturns of 20% or more, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. The average bear market decline is a sizable 40%. Then there’s the mega-bears like the 2007-2009 rout during the financial crisis that knocked the S&P 500 down 57% and the nearly 50% slide after the internet stock bubble burst in 2000.

Much of the modern information era would not be possible without silicon and Moore’s Law, and electric cars would be much less viable without recent advances in the material science behind lithium-ion batteries.

That’s why graphene, a two-dimensional supermaterial made from carbon, is so exciting. It’s harder than diamonds, 300x stronger than steel, flexible, transparent, and a better conductor than copper (by about 1,000x).

If it lives up to its potential, graphene could revolutionize everything from computers to energy storage.

Graphene: Is It the Next Wonder Material?

The following infographic comes to us from 911Metallurgist, and it breaks down the incredible properties and potential applications of…

Believe it or not, autonomous vehicles have been many decades in the making.

Even in 1939, General Motors had an exhibit called “Futurama” at the New York World’s Fair that presented a model of the world 20 years in the future. Central to this display was a system of automated highways and vast suburbs, with a focus on how automation could reduce traffic congestion and lead to the free-flowing movement of people and goods.

Since then, many autonomous vehicle concepts have popped up at various times – but they have always fell short due to technical limitations. Only recently, due to advances in technology, have self-driving cars been able to overcome three primary engineering challenges: sensing the surrounding environment, processing information, and reacting to that environment.

Today, the future for autonomous vehicles is bright, and it is expected that there will be millions of self-driving cars on the road by 2035, creating a multi-billion dollar…

Over the last few years, we’ve seen a significant downtick in the number of IPOs issued by companies, but will 2017 break that trend? So far this year we have seen five companies go public on a U.S. stock exchange, and today we saw the first tech IPO of the year with Snap, Inc.

Snap, Inc. is technology and social media company known for its mobile app Snapchat, which allows users to share photos and videos with friends for moments to hours before disappearing. Founded in July 2011, what began as a tech start-up garnered 23 active investors and raised around $2.6 billion in venture capital backing.

Now that Snap, Inc. has gone public with an IPO priced at $17 per share, ahead of the expected $14-$16 a share range, it’s trickier to forecast its performance. Looking at some of Snap’s numbers, investment attractiveness it likely to be in the eye of the…

I found this interesting (the rise) however I have my own reservations because of the possible change in rates and inflation in 2017. When inflation rises, interest rates also normally rise to maintain real rates within an appropriate range. PE ratios need to decline to reflect the increase in the earnings discount rate. Another way to look at it is that equities then face more competition for money from fixed income instruments. The cost of equities must therefore decline to keep or attract investors. Then there is the Rule of 20 to consider. Rule of 20 equals P/E + long term interest rates (average of 10 and 30 yr bond rates). If at or below 20 minus…

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